His Choice
by dotheyreally
Summary: Draco never knew how important the power of choice was.  He never knew how it could affect not only him, but the people around, especially the one he loves.


**Disclaimer: I do not own HP. :-)  
A/N: for sofia's third fanfic contest. Hope you all enjoy! x **

**A/N 2: Guess who's back. :**

**His Choice**

_Tap, tap, tap tap tap, tap._

He felt the pulsating vibrations of his drumming fingers as he waited with bated breath in the waiting lounge. His breathing was labored and his palms started sweating, characteristics that were the total opposite to who he was in his normal state. His skin felt cold to the touch as beads of sweat started forming on his forehead. The area was in a tizzy as healers and their assistants run from room to room, handling the sudden influx of patients checking in while receptionists were ducking behind their desks as infuriated customers threw hexes due to the mix-up in files. The intonations of _"HURRY UP!" _and "_WHAT IS TAKING YOU LOT SO LONG? I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO—"_

He was not in the mood for curses and swears. His life right now and the fact that he was sitting in that chair in Saint Mungo's were equally enough for expletives already. He started shaking slightly.

_What is happening to me?_

He stared at the Wizard clock ticking as the cursed bird flew in and out, signaling that it had been a good six hours since he had been there. Narcissa would want to know where he was. Lucius would demand and start wondering too. Pansy would have his head for missing yet another of her damn tea parties.

_Pansy._

Where would he start about Pansy?

And yet again, as memories flashed through his head, he became abnormally sick in the stomach. He growled, thinking how guilt had finally caught up with him and pleaded with his thoughts to stop plaguing him.

_He'd had enough guilt to plague him for the rest of his life._

"Mum! Mum! Look."

He kept his face buried in his palms, frustrated and anxious about how people would see his family. How people would see his circle of friends. How people would see _him._

"He looks like that Death Eater Draco Malfoy." The mum responded snidely.

Draco was about to lash out at the snippy woman when the child responded quickly, "Mum. He is _not_ Draco Malfoy. If he brought all those people here in the first place, what would he be doing here?"

Yes, what was Draco Malfoy doing in Saint Mungo's? What was he doing in the place full of people he had brought here in the first place?

He looked up again, eyes watery and breathing still heavy. The child and the mother was gone and he breathed a labored sigh of relief.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Draco's head snapped towards a healer's assistant.

"Are you all right?" the assistant asked as she flipped through a series of documented files with her index finger.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he replied, trying to level his tone.

"You don't look all right… are you looking to check in? Oh, bullocks, that Doris Heath! She's absentminded yet again! Not looking out for incoming patients…"

"What are you babbling about?" Draco snapped.

"You're not supposed to be here."

It all boiled down to choices.

Draco had always known that to be true.

All his life he blamed his parents, Voldemort, and even Harry Potter for all the mistakes he had to go through all his life when he should have started with the self. He was a man for crying out loud! He was supposed to know what he wanted and what he didn't want. He was supposed to know whether he could benefit or lose out. He was supposed to _know_.

He mentally slapped himself with that continuous flow of thought. _Supposed to know? Supposed to know?_ His conscience had outstretched itself out of morality too much to _suppose to know._ Why, from the day he was born, he was to follow and serve Lord Voldemort with his father's companions, his own mother dragged into the evils and rotten work they do on innocent nonmagic folk. He was supposed to be sorted into Slytherin. He was supposed to murder Dumbledore.

All these choices were made _for_ him and made _by _him.

And as he glanced at the Wizard Clock again, he realized he had waited for another six hours. He came by for the fifth time that week with some sort of hope that the reason for his visit would take him back.

That he knew was a choice he himself _made_.

_"Could you stop rattling those books like so, Malfoy?" she snapped. "You're in a library for Merlin's sake… oh there you go again!"_

_ Draco looked at her with glaring eyes._

_ "And what is it with you Gryffindors and meddling in other people's business? I thought you knew better about privacy, Granger. You could always just look it up in that huge head of yours."_

_ "Oh, shut it with your insults, Draco."_

_ Draco stiffened as Hermione recoiled, knowing the mistake she had made that instant._

_ "What did you say?"_

_ "I said nothing."_

_ "No, you said my name."_

_ Hermione was silent as she blushed crimson._

_ "Then why did you ask me if you knew what I said?"_

_ Draco cracked a small smile._

_ "Could you say it again?"_

It was just an affair for Merlin's sake! One little meet-up in the library because they've been partnered up for some sort of potions assignment that crackpot Severus Snape maliciously manipulated. One tiny brush of hands while reaching for the same book on lacewings and mettles because they were at each other's throats that night.

More like they were _in _each other's throats.

_Oh stop yourself, Draco Malfoy!_

He inebriated himself every night with eight glasses of firewhiskey. And he'd come home with his mind out of place and yet memories of what had been would replay in his conscious so vividly, so perfectly.

Intoxicatingly sober.

He would hear voices. He would hear her singsong yet commanding tone ringing in the depths of his mind, her laugh when she would tell him a funny anecdote of Neville Longbottom's, and the way she would slowly look at her hand inch towards his and their fingers would meet, and that was that.

His heart ached at what his mind had presented to him. He glanced at his hand and saw that it was obviously empty. And he wished that he would get the chance to finally intertwine his fingers with hers and make her solve the puzzle of untangling them again.

He would make sure that it would take forever for her to find that out.

_"Draco?"_

_ Pansy Parkinson's voice trilled in Draco's head as he flipped his book mindlessly, pretending to be engrossed in hippogriffs just so she would go away._

_ But she persisted._

_ "Draco?"_

_ "Go away, Pansy."_

_ "What are you doing tonight, love?"_

_ "I'm continuing my project with Granger."_

_ A look of surprise and contempt traced the pug-like features of the Slytherin girl._

_ "What? It's been three months since that project was given out, Draco. Why would it take you and Granger so long to finish?"_

_ Draco finally gave her the time of day and glanced menacingly at her._

_ "Not that you would be able to note the difference between cramming and hard work, Parkinson," Draco replied idly as he shut his book in frustration. "But Granger and I made sure that when we present next week, we're going to get spectacular grades, as usual."_

_ "Why didn't you tell Snape to switch partners? I for one do not want to work with Ron Weasley."_

_ "Well, you can't do anything about it, can you, Parkinson?"_

_ "No."_

_ Draco smirked triumphantly._

_ "Well, go away now because I have to finish reading on hippogriffs."_

_ "Is that how you treat your girlfriend, Malfoy?" she sniffled as she turned around to return to her bedroom._

_ And for once, Draco's heart twisted with guilt._

_ How was he supposed to choose?_

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Is she awake, healer?"

Healer Jerome looked at the now pale, tired blond man with grim eyes.

"Not yet, sir," Jerome replied, his tone floaty. "But we're still hoping for the best."

With that, Draco stood up and left again.

It was the eighth time.

Pansy would have had his head.

_"And I do recall that Neville's mandrake screamed for what seemed like the nth time. Oh, Harry, Ron, and I couldn't stop laughing!"_

_ Her eyes disappeared as she giggled softly._

_ "And what happened next?" Draco asked, knowing that he would much rather hear her laugh than hear about that git Longbottom._

_ "Well, that was it," Hermione frowned but her lips cracked a smile again. "Oh yes, now I do remember about this one time in Hagrid's class…"_

_ "You look beautiful."_

_ Hermione stopped talking and suddenly looked down, avoiding the penetrating greys of her partner._

_ "What?"_

_ "Do you want me to repeat myself?" Draco smirked._

_ "I… no… Yes?" Hermione blushed._

_ "Why? Don't get that a lot?"_

_ Hermione shook her head slowly._

_ "I don't actually."_

_ Draco moved closer to Hermione and she felt her knees weaken as the smell of wood spice invaded her nostrils._

_ "Then I vow to tell you that everyday."_

_ "What would you tell me everyday?" Hermione traced the outlines of a book's frayed spine._

_ "That you're beautiful."_

_ Hermione looked at the face of the handsome Slytherin as he kissed her softly on the lips and he felt her smile play afterwards._

_ But the guilt of being with someone else was getting to Draco._

_ He knew that the war was also looming on, knowing soon enough that he would have to let someone else go._

_ The clock was ticking._

"Malfoy?"

_Oh god, _Draco thought as he looked up to see a redheaded man clutching a file tightly. _Not him._

"Weasley?"

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm visiting…"

"Hermione?" Ron's eyes narrowed.

"Who else?"

Ron's glare hardened.

"Do you know what she would say, Malfoy? It's been a year since she found out she was the other woman to _Pansy Parkinson_. Do you think she even has the strength to wake up?"

"What are you trying to say, Weasley? It's not like I had a choice!" Draco shot back, guilt shooting itself into his veins.

"We all make _choices_, Malfoy," Ron hissed at his archnemesis. "You could have chosen _her._"

"It really wasn't my fault, Weasley," Draco sighed, exasperated and confused as to why he was explaining himself to Ron. "It was Pansy's."

"Oh, please, Malfoy, stop blaming others. You have only yourself to blame."

Draco shook his head.

"I'm not the only one at fault here."

_The war was at its peak and bodies were falling from brooms like asteroids during a storm. Draco pulled Hermione into the broom closet as she wept on his shoulder, embracing him tightly. _

_ "Stop crying, Granger, please," Draco pleaded as he closed his eyes as he held her in his arms. "It will be all right, I promise."_

_ "How could it be all right, Malfoy?" Hermione inhaled raggedly as tears dropped onto Draco's white shirt. "Voldemort's battling with Harry, bodies are everywhere…"_

_ Draco was silent as Hermione broke free, clutching onto her wand tightly._

_ "Draco, I… if ever we don't make it…"_

_ "Don't say that." Draco snapped as he grasped her hand, his fingers chaining onto the spaces in between her fingers. _

_ "Well, we can't always hope to stay alive!" Hermione snapped back as she blasted a hole into one of the walls of the closet, getting a good view of what was happening outside. "Look outside, Malfoy, people are dying…"_

_ "But we're not. I swear to you."_

_ Hermione smiled faintly. But Draco saw the shadow of anxiety trace her features and he wished that he could do something to make her worries to go away. _

_ But he too had responsibilities. He had a reputation to uphold._

_ All of a sudden…_

"Then what?" Ron asked with impatience. "What did you do?"

"I can't do it, Weasley," Draco hissed. "I can't continue."

"Why not? You have every right to prove it to me before…"

"I just want to see Granger, all right?" Draco sat, weakened by the emotions crashing over him. "I just want to see _her_. Please?"

Ron looked at his archnemesis with newfound pity as he saw him to be very vulnerable. He had never seen him that waybefore. Or he had never seen Draco so much in love with a person. All he heard from Draco was the fact that he missed Ron's best friend.

"Well, she was one step ahead." Ron replied after a few minutes.

Draco, whose hands were buried in his face, looked up slowly.

"What do you mean?"

"She wanted to see you, you know," Ron continued. "Before she slipped into that coma."

Draco's eyes widened. He was overcome with shock to realize that Ron had said this a year too late.

"Can I… can I see her now?" his voice was trembling.

Ron nodded.

"Of course. But she's not awake yet."

"I don't care, Weasley! I just…"

He got up and was about to walk when Ron patted him awkwardly on the back.

"Take care of her, all right?"

Draco nodded and replied, "Thanks, Weasley, for this…"

"Don't mention it, mate," Ron shook his head. "Go."

Draco gave him a small smile and made his way through the hallowed hallways of the hospital.

His heart was thudding in his chest as he was nearing her room. Memories of his sins flooded his mind while thoughts of her integrated with those memories. His mind was tired. He was tired. But yet he had to fill this longing for her. He had to see her. He wanted to see her.

_"Draco! How could you?" Pansy screamed as she saw Draco after his battle with Neville Longbottom. "How could you do this to me?"_

_ "What did I do to you, Parkinson?" Draco snapped, his back turned as he made his way to the entrance of Hogwarts. "I don't think now is the time to discuss our—"_

_ "Why did you cheat on me?"_

_ Draco's throat tightened._

_ She knew._

_ "After all that we've been through…"_

_ "After all that we've been through?" Draco spat. "I never loved you, Parkinson, and I never will! Now go away! I have to fight!"_

_ "Fight for what? A lost cause? You know your father will never allow you to be with her, Draco!" _

_ Draco's eyes flashed as he turned to face her._

_ " He will turn in his grave when he sees you with a Mudblood."_

_ "Don't you dare call her that, Parkinson," Draco growled. "Or I swear I will kill you."_

_ Pansy's eyes brimmed with tears as she looked at the man she loved. The man who loved someone else._

_ "I wish you would defend me as much as you would her. Why do you love her and not me?"_

_ Draco could number a lot of things but decided to keep quiet._

_ "Because I just do."_

_ Pansy saw Hermione running towards their direction and suddenly smiled at Draco with fresh malice._

_ She grabbed him by the collar and kissed him._

_ "PANSY! GET OFF—"_

_ Pansy's eyes sparkled as she saw Hermione stop dead in her tracks, her face pale._

_ "Malfoy?"_

_ Draco's heart wrenched as he heard the sweetest of voices turn sour. He pushed a cackling Pansy to the ground as he ran to embrace Hermione but received a slap in return._

_ "I can explain."_

_ "I was the other woman?" Hermione's voice was painfully soft. "I was the second to Pansy?"_

_ "No, wait, Granger…"_

_ "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU BASTARDIZED ME, DRACO MALFOY!" Hermione lashed out as she pointed at him, her face full of fury and rage. "YOU TREATED ME LIKE I'M SOME SORT OF EASY GIRL THAT JUST FALLS IN LOVE WITH MEN LIKE YOU!"_

_ Draco kept silent, wishing his mind to form some sort of reply._

_ "Granger, I…"_

_ "But I was. I fell in love with you," Hermione's eyes were full of tears. "And I came all the way here to tell you that."_

_ And she turned around to walk away, brushing the tears that were falling hard. "I never want to hear from you or see you again."_

_ Draco watched helplessly as she disappeared in the midst of flashing lights, nowhere to be seen, her fate unknown._

"No…" Draco laid his hand onto the concrete wall, suddenly lightheaded from unwanted wistfulness. "Stop…"

_A flash of light occurred in the near distance and a scream was emitted. _

_ Draco knew that scream._

_ He knew it all too well._

_ He left a group of befuddled death eaters and followed the sound. He arrived, standing over a now unconscious Hermione. He knelt down beside her, tears falling as he watched the one he loved bleed incessantly._

_ "Granger, wake up," he whispered into her ear. "Wake up, Granger, please."_

_ "Get away from there, Malfoy," Harry Potter said coldly. "She needs to be brought to Saint Mungo's."_

_ "Leave me be, Potter!" Draco screamed. "Leave me be with her!"_

_ "If I have to pry your hands off her wrists, I will." Ron chimed in angrily._

_ Draco, knowing he was beat by her two best friends, got up and was about to turn his heel when he said._

_ "I'll bring her."_

"Sir?"

Draco realized he'd been sitting outside Hermione's room, his eyes painful from the salty tears. He looked up at the healer and croaked, "May I see her?"

The Healer smiled, nodding.

"Of course."

Draco got up and entered the double doors.

And then he saw her.

He knew that people looked their ugliest when they were strapped down on a bed, weakened by disease or accidents. But when he saw Hermione Granger, he thought he had never seen anyone look so beautiful and rested. And then he felt that he should leave for he didn't want to disturb her or make her feel suffering all over again.

But he had to stay.

He had to tell her just in case she wouldn't rise anymore.

He had to tell he had fallen in love too.

His knees weakened with every step he took and as he neared her, his breathing grew unsteady.

"Granger?" he croaked as he reached for her hand, expecting her to reply.

No response.

"Granger?" his voice cracked as he repeated her name for the second time.

Nothing.

"Hermione?"

_Draco?_ Her voice trilled inside his mind.

But her lips didn't move at all.

And that's when he broke down. He trembled as he laid his head facedown beside hers, his sobs loud and his tears soaking the pillow.

"Granger, it's been too long," he whispered into her ear. "I'm here. I'm here with you. Wake up. Wake up please."

He could hear her steady inhales and he knew he had to say it all.

"Granger," his garbled voice surfaced. "Granger, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything that happened to you. I'm sorry for not choosing you when the time presented itself. I… I'm… I'm sorry…"

His thoughts were colliding. There was too much to say.

"You changed me," he said, gripping onto her hand tighter. "You did. And I just wanted to say 'I love you.'"

He cried again as he kissed her forehead thrice. And then his lips grazed her cheeks and then her lips, his tears falling faster.

"God, I love you," Draco wept. "I love you so much."

He kissed her hand and rested his cheek on its back, soaking her skin.

"Granger, please," Draco pleaded for the last time. "Please wake up. I'm here. I'm here."

Nothing still.

"Well, I have to go then," Draco inhaled, his breathing heavy. He laid her hand back onto the bed and was about to let go when he felt a grip on his palm. He looked to see that her fingers intertwined with his and relief washed over him right away.

_She was still there_.

He smiled as he turned to face her again, knowing there were no more words needed. He chose her and she _still_ chose him. And that was all that mattered.

He knew he would stay until she woke up because he knew she was fighting.

She was fighting for survival.

She was fighting to begin again.

She was fighting to begin again _with him_.

Draco kissed her fingers one by one, knowing he would do the same for her.

Her grip on his hand tightened and he knew her hold would be too strong to let go of. But like he promised, he would make sure it would take forever for her to solve the puzzle of letting go.

Because he knew at that moment, he would never loosen his grip ever again.


End file.
